A dry climate is defined as ________.
A) a climate where the temperature is over 25oC
B) one where the rainfall is less than 10 cm per year
C) one were the evaporation exceeds the precipitation
D) a climate where wind is the dominate form of erosion
E) all of the above
What is required for an igneous rock to weather?
A) It must move downslope under the influence of gravity.
B) It must be exposed at the surface of the Earth.
C) It must be uplifted from where it was emplaced.
D) It must be deposited by water or ice.
When rocks experience high temperatures and differential stresses deep in the Earth,
their grains tend to ________.
A) break in small fragments like a piece of fine crystal
B) fracture along planes of weakness
C) flatten and elongate
D) form new minerals
The Sierra Nevada Mountains of California, and the Teton Mountains of Wyoming,
ranges are examples of ________.
A) fault blocks uplifted by late Tertiary to Quaternary normal faulting
B) folding, compression, and thickening of Paleozoic strata in Jurassic time
C) isostatic uplift of crust over thickened in early Paleozoic time
D) uplifted blocks bounded by Quaternary reverse faults
Large estuaries are more common on a(n) ________ coastline.
A) submergent
B) emergent
C) stable
D) retreating
Which of the following colors has the longest wavelength?
A) blue
B) violet
C) green
D) red
E) orange
A dendritic (tree-like) drainage pattern develops in regions where the underlying
material is relatively uniform so the major control on the water movement is ________.
A) vegetation
B) slope
C) saturation
D) climate
E) sediment load
The first fully land-based animals were ________.
A) reptiles
B) amphibians
C) eukaryotes
D) stromatolites
E) cephalopods
Another name for the area of equatorial low pressure is the ________.
A) subpolar easterlies
B) westerlies
C) doldrums
D) horse latitudes
The strong tendency of certain minerals to break along smooth, parallel planes is known
as ________.
A) streak
B) cleavage
C) cracking luster
D) habit
Which of the following is not necessary for a hypothesis to be accepted by the scientific
community?
A) It must be testable.
B) It must predict something other than the observations it was based on.
C) There must be alternative hypotheses proposed.
D) It must be based on observations or facts.
Isotherms, lines of equal temperature, are commonly used to ________.
A) compare temperatures in different regions
B) compare temperature variations in different regions
C) compare temperatures over a large area
D) compare temperature variations over a large area
E) show how temperature changes with time
Which of the following is not an accurate statement about the melting process in the
earth’s interior?
A) Melting of rocks is incomplete with partial melts extracted as magma and solid
residues left behind.
B) Water dramatically lowers the melting temperature of silicate rocks, and addition of
water commonly contributes to production of magma.
C) Upwelling flow in the earth’s interior brings higher temperature rocks toward the
surface and contributes to decompression melting.
D) The earth’s lower mantle is entirely molten and heat from this zone produces partial
melting in the upper mantle, which produces the diverse volcanic rocks we see at the
earth’s surface.
Much of the early hydrogen and helium escaped the earth’s atmosphere into space
because ________.
A) The earth’s gravity was weak
B) The earth’s gravity was strong
C) Solar winds were strong
D) Solar winds were weak
E) All of the above
Petrified wood is an example of a fossil formed by ________.
A) direct preservation
B) cast and mold preservation
C) permineralization replacing original cellulose of the wood
D) trace fossil imprints
Evidence that tensile stresses are actively pulling the lithosphere apart in an ocean ridge
system is given by ________.
A) the width of the ridge system
B) the height of the ridge system
C) the existence of a rift valley in a ridge system
D) the lack of thick sediments on the ridge system sea floor
The Mercalli Scale is a scale from ________.
A) 1 to 12 that rates the energy required for faulting to occur
B) 1 to 10 that rates the energy released by an earthquake
C) I to XII that rates the structural damage due to an earthquake
D) I to X that rates the total energy released during the main quake and all aftershocks
About 88 percent of geologic time is represented by the time span called the ________
era.
A) Paleozoic
B) Precambrian
C) Mesozoic
D) Phanerozoic
A statement you will sometimes hear people say is that a day is not 24 hours but is
really 23 hr. 56 min. and 4 sec. What does this refer to?
A) The original definition of the hour was off, and with more accurate atomic clocks we
now realize the real day is this length.
B) This is sidereal time, not solar time; a solar day is 24 hours.
C) Our clocks drift that much each day, and we average out the affect with period time
shifts, like leap years and leap seconds.
D) It is just an urban geek myth; the day really is 24 hours long.
What condition is most necessary to build a glacier?
A) The elevation of the area must be high enough to allow snow to fall regularly.
B) The temperature must be cold enough to cause snow to fall regularly.
C) The snow must be able to move downhill slowly.
D) More snow must fall in the winter than melts in the summer.
Productivity in temperate oceans is determined by ________.
A) latitude
B) seasons
C) ocean currents
D) all of these
Which of the following is correct regarding a wave in the open ocean?
A) Water particles move in an almost circular path.
B) Such waves are called waves of oscillation.
C) Waves do not exist in the open ocean only near the coast.
D) None of these
Under what circumstances could the relative humidity exceed 100% without producing
condensation in the air?
A) when the dew point is higher than the air temperature
B) when the air is perfectly dry
C) when the water vapor is composed of “heavy” water
D) when there are no condensation nuclei
An echo sounder operates by measuring the time required for a ________.
A) light beam to travel from a satellite at a known altitude to the sea bottom and back
B) radar beam to travel from a harbor patrol boat to a fuzz-buster on a speeding yacht
C) radar beam to travel from a ship to the seafloor and back
D) sound pulse travels from a ship to the seafloor and back
Sea level change will have its greatest impact on coastal areas that are ________.
A) active continental margins like California and Chile
B) volcanic islands like Hawaii
C) subduction zones like Japan
D) passive continental margins like the eastern U.S. and southern India
E) all of the above
The quartz in granite begins to melt at 650oC, so if we find a migmatite where quartz
has melted in a granitic rock and we know the temperature in the region increased with
depth by about 25oC per kilometer, we could estimate the depth that the rock had been
at to be about ________.
A) 12.5 km
B) 18.0 km
C) 23.5 km
D) 26.0 km
In the television series “Cosmos” the astronomer Carl Sagan used to say, “We are all
made of star stuff.” What did he mean by that?
A) All of the chemical elements were formed during the big bang when the universe
began, so we are like the stars.
B) We all have to potential to be stars.
C) All of the chemical elements in our solar system were forged in an ancient star that
went supernova.
D) The earth has incorporated large amounts of chemical material from the solar wind,
so our bodies carry this material.
The release of water vapor to the atmosphere by plants is called ________.
A) evaporation
B) degassing
C) transpiration
D) infiltration
The ________ is the thinnest layer of the earth.
A) crust
B) outer core
C) mantle
D) inner core
The most unreliable (variable) diagnostic property of minerals such as quartz is
________.
A) hardness
B) habit
C) specific gravity
D) color
Ore deposits of the element ________ do not require extreme concentrations because it
is one of the most abundant elements in the Earth’s crust.
A) aluminum
B) boron
C) carbon
D) uranium
What is the difference between “magma” and “lava”?
A) Magma is formed deep in the Earth and lava forms near the surface of the Earth.
B) It is just a name change, and lava is what magma is called if it reaches the surface of
the Earth.
C) Magma makes igneous rocks and lava forms volcanoes.
D) Magma is less dense than lava.
The most common reason that dew forms is ________.
A) fast heating of the atmosphere when the sun first comes up in the morning
B) a rapid increase in water vapor in the air during the night
C) radiant cooling of the ground and adjacent air in the evening
D) plants give up water to the atmosphere when the temperature decreases
Refer to the figure below, captured from Google Earth, for the following questions.
At location B you might expect to find a ________ basin
________ sediment consists of shells and hard parts of marine organisms.
Identify the letter in the figure below that corresponds to a fracture zone:
Label the various clouds on the diagram below.
Which astronomer developed the three laws of planetary motion?
The figure above is an oblique Google earth image from southwestern North America
looking approximately north. The view is approximately 50km across. The area is a
classic area of normal faulting.
The topographic highlands, or ranges, in this area labeled A are also called ________
blocks.
Compare and contrast the Ptolemaic System with the Copernican System. Are there any
similarities? What are the key differences? How did the prevailing ideas or perspectives
of society affect each of these explanations?
Joe Geologist discovers a vein made up primarily of quartz but also containing
significant amounts of pyrite as well as chalcopyrite. He knows better than to fall for
fool’s gold, and decides to ignore the vein. Did he make the right decision? Explain.
Light can be described as a stream of fast-moving particles called ________.
One of the discoveries that led to the modern view of the solar system was that the
orbits of the planets are not circular but ________.
In the figure above, identify the letter corresponding to a playa lake.
________ is the basic force that moves or accelerates soil and regolith down a slope.
Examine the words and/or phrases for each question below and determine the
relationship among the majority of words/phrases. Choose the option which does not fit
the pattern.
Has the Big Bang hypothesis been successfully tested?
Examine the words and/or phrases for each question below and determine the
relationship among the majority of words/phrases. Choose the option which does not fit
the pattern.
Which letter, S thru Z, corresponds to the object in the photo labeled “E”?
Examine the words and/or phrases for each question below and determine the
relationship among the majority of words/phrases. Choose the option which does not fit
the pattern.